Blockade Billy

Fun, Short Listen

Craig Wasson is excellent in all of his audiobook performances!

Billy, for obvious reasons...

Stephen King can still write a short story that packs a wallop. He does it twice here. "Blockade Billy" particularly appeals to me, since it's a baseball story, and I'm a huge fan, as King is.
He creates a baseball team in dire need of a catcher-and a catcher who will be one-no matter the cost.
Cost is a factor in the second story, "Morality," to be exact, the cost of a woman's soul. She and her husband are in desperate need of money, but the act they commit to get it is more than the lady can handle.
Blockade Billy is read by Craig Wasson, who is as good as it gets and clearly loves his baseball.
Whoever reads "Morality," it's a good yarn too.

It was awfully short, but worth the listen.

Captured the character well.

Yes.

As a couple of stories this book is decent, but as a Stephen King book, it tends to fall a bit short.

Baseball - it is a baseball book, from the "old school" type baseball books. S. King is sooooo good, with descriptions, it is easy to get a visual picture in your head of the setting / time frame, etc.

"The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" was my first thought - regarding a comparison. However Blockade Billy is really too short to compare, I wanted more! I thought it was too long to be a magazine article ( and too long to be considered a short story) and too short for a book. But I did like it.

This was my first. I thought Craig Wasson's performance was very good.

Yes. I wanted to listen to this while doing my training run. Either I've too slow, or the book was too short, because it ended before the run :(

This is not classic S. King - it is different for him. I'm somewhat of a S. King fanatic. He is the ultimate story teller!

I had put this book off for some time because I am not a huge baseball fan. I thought the the baseball part of story would annoy me. To my delight, it did not. On the contrary, it was the perfect backdrop for the creepiness that King is so good at. As a bonus, this audiobook includes a second short story entitled "Morality." It's a great, troubling little story that bothered me terribly while listening to it. Of course, that made it so great. At only two hours for two stories, there's simply no reason to not listen to this book!

Not only have I listened to Blockade Billy again I have several times. I enjoin this story and it is well done. Though not your normal Stephen King it still has the King twist at the end.

If you enjoy this one, you will also enjoy 11-22-63, it's extremely well done and it flows. Craig Wasson does a wonderful joy with that one as well. You will be listening to it over and over.

The first and only time "Billy" notices the crowd and tips his hat.

I would recommend this to a friend, because it was an engaging and well-narrated story.

I think Billy's story was the most interesting. Perhaps less interesting were some of the baseball facts. Necessary, but not necessarily interesting.

I thought the narrator was a good choice. There wasn't anything I disliked.

Definitely.

If you like baseball, you'll enjoy a good ball story with that eerie Stephen King twist.

Blockade Billy was a very good, fast paced story that I enjoyed very much. I am a Stephen King fan and with the exception of the ending to Blockade, which I found brief and somewhat anticlimactic, there were unique elements in the story that I thought were terrific. Morality was equally good, a little shocking and scary, as you would expect. Overall very good and enjoyable stories.